Synchronicity
by crazybeagle
Summary: In which Dirk is blind, Jake is his caretaker. In which Dirk is hurt, but Jake is sick. Based on tumblr user my-friend-the-frog's AU. Implied DirkJake.
1. Chapter 1

_Synchronicity_

_Chapter 1_

_For tumblr blogger my-friend-the-frog's lovely blind!Dirk and caretaker!Jake AU. Based on this comic (my-friend-the-frog) (.tumblr) (.com) (/post/6270410638 1/i-dont-know-how-author-notes), in which Jake is sick in bed and Dirk attempts to help him out by fetching some painkillers from the bathroom.  
_

_Crash._ "Fuck." _Crash. Thud._

The shattering of glass.

"Dirk?!"

A sheepish, muttered apology from the next room.

"Ah…sorry."

Then, _crash. _

_Crash._ You wince.

"Uh…I'm okay."

But you're already on your feet. Your head gives a nasty throb and a sudden lurch of vertigo threatens to knock you right back down, but you grimace and vault yourself towards the bathroom.

…Only to have the door promptly slammed in your face, and to hear the _click_ of the lock catching.

"Dirk?" you call, then cough, jiggling the handle.

"Gotta take a leak, dude," comes the muffled response, but you hear him rummaging around in there, probably under the sink, more glass crunching under his shoes.

"And since when have you ever bothered to lock the blasted door while you're doing _that_?" You roll your eyes.

But there's no answer, just a minute or two more of rummaging, a muttered curse and a sharp hiss of breath through his teeth.

You should be more worried than you are, probably, but mostly you're just annoyed to lock you out, and too exhausted to see straight. Oh, and irritated that he's left you with what's sure to be one fine mess to clean up in there when you're feeling like so much shit, and you _know _it's unfair of you because he was just trying to help you and he's probably in there trying to clean it all up himself, bless him. But your head's so heavy and your chest feels funny and before you quite realize how you got there you're sitting on your ass in front of the door, head in your own lap, wheezing.

"Jake?"

You didn't even hear him come out of the bathroom. He sounds alarmed, and you didn't even have to indicate to him where you were sitting before he drops to a crouch in front of you and you feel his hands on your back.

"Jesus, you sound awful."

"…._feel _frigging awful…"

Lifting your head is a monumental effort- it's full of rocks, you swear, or snot more likely, but it's so _heavy. _You do it anyway, and when you do you start and swear and nearly have a heart attack right then and there because he's kneeling in front of you and he's _covered in blood. _

His brows draw together above his shades at your startled sound, but it's not until you grab his wrists to search for the source of it that his mouth presses into a tight line and he shrugs.

"I took care of it." His voice turns sheepish when you peel away a bloody and poorly-taped gauze strip from the inside of his forearm. "It's fine…"

"No, it's bloody well _not _fine, Jiminy Fucking Christmas, Dirk…"

You lift his arm closer to your face and squint—you didn't have time to grab your glasses. You don't see any bits of glass in it but it's a doozy of a gash on the inside of his wrist, long and fairly deep and definitely in need of stitches. You prod at it gently as you dare and he suppresses a grimace when a rather alarming amount of blood seeps down his arm and over his fingers.

"Come on then," you say, clapping him on the back. "Stitches. Now."

You start to stand back up, but too fast apparently, because dizziness slams into you like a brick wall and you fall right back down, the force of it making you cough several times. Hard. Dirk winces at the sound but snatches his arm away while you're preoccupied, your face buried in your own elbow.

It's when you can't _stop _coughing that he starts looking worried. Well, from what you can see of him through your watering eyes when you look up, wheezing.

"Hey." And he's reaching for you, his hands catching on the front of your shirt and smearing some blood there. One hand finds your shoulder, the other splaying out across your chest. "Jake. Breathe, okay."

Blood drips between you and him and onto the carpet, onto the knees of your sweatpants.

You manage to nod, eyes still burning, but when you suck in a breath it's like inhaling the mirror shards that are currently scattered all over the bathroom. What you wouldn't give to lie down right here and now and sleep. But another fat drop of blood hits the carpet, and you mentally shake yourself, take as deep a breath as you through all the gunk in your lungs, and vault yourself unceremoniously off the floor.

He gets up too, kind of just standing there and shifting from foot to foot, as though he's not quite sure what to do. You tell him to stay put for just a tick and head past him into the bathroom, feeling nauseous as you sidestep the mess of blood and shattered glass on the floor. One pane of mirrored glass from the medicine cabinet is almost completely missing now, save one long thin sliver still stuck in the frame, which must have been where Dirk cut himself. You realize with a twinge of guilt what must have happened—that mirror pane had been loose for some time now, and you hadn't thought to repair it. All it would have taken for the whole thing to fall out and smash to bits would be somebody opening or shutting it a little too hard, and you'd completely forgotten to say anything. Hell, even a bit of masking tape probably would have done the trick, or at least prevented _this_ from happening.

There are a few red fingerprints on the first aid kit sitting open on the toilet seat. There was a kit in every bathroom where Dirk could get to it, an emergency measure, every item inside with its own printed label in neat braille.

But even so it's apparent that Dirk needs more medical attention that he could administer to himself out of a box under the bathroom sink, even if he could see what he was doing.

You grab a fresh towel and re-emerge from the bathroom, and you figure he heard the linen closet door open because he snatches the towel out of your hands before you even get the chance to fold it and press it against the wound.

"Keep pressure on that," you say, and cough again, as he swathes his arm in the towel and hugs it to his chest, and he snorts dismissively but doesn't smile.

You let out a long breath that makes your throat tickle and ache, and nearly start coughing again, but you gulp it back down, running your fingers through your own rather sweaty hair.

"Alright. Okay. Uh, let's just sit you down here—" You take his shoulder and steer him to the bed before he can really stop you, though you know he hates being herded anywhere—"and I'll get your wallet and med file and we can go."

But Dirk doesn't sit down, doesn't move at all, his face blank. You think he looks a touch paler than before—you can't be sure, but it sets your heart pounding.

"Dirk?"

He starts a bit at your voice, but the barest of smirks touches his lips. "Yeah. Well hurry up, asshole. Time is precious lifeblood here."

"Hah…right." You don't think it's very funny but apparently neither does he, if his stiff shoulders and clenched jaw are anything to go on.

But in under two minutes, you're both in the car and pulling out of the apartment lot, Dirk trying not to bleed through a second towel. You'd nearly ran out the door and down to the car once you'd scooped up Dirk's and your own wallets, Dirk's file, and the car keys, and Dirk had had to actually cling onto your arm to keep up with you and to keep from falling flat on his face.

But now you're regretting it, because you feel as though you're going to pass out at the wheel. When you'd first reached the driver's side after letting Dirk in, you'd staggered against the car door, knees threatening to buckle beneath you and cold liquid fire seeming to fill your lungs every time you tried to draw a breath. After one more obnoxiously drawn-out coughing fit, deep, wet and hacking coughs that nearly bent you double and probably woke the neighbors, you got in the car, clinging to the wheel with numb fingers and not entirely convinced you wouldn't faint before you made it there.

Your throat feels unbearably scratchy, so you breathe as shallowly as possible for the entirety of the ride—through your mouth, because your blasted nose is too damn stopped up—afraid of setting off another coughing fit and wrecking the car.

Dirk already looks concerned—funny, considering he's the one with his own blood seeping through that second towel pressed to his arms and leaking out between his pale fingers.

The corner of his mouth is tugged downwards, and he's holding himself very rigid in the seat. "Your breathing sounds fucking gross, dude," street lamps reflecting off his shades. "And _loud, _damn, you want to make me deaf too?" His voice is terse and anybody else might think he's just being a prick but you know better.

You roll your eyes. "Well, _do_ forgive me my necessary bodily functions, Strider."

"You know you could have called Jane or Roxy to take a look instead of trapping me in here with you and your airborne viruses…"

"You need stitches," you counter.

"And _you _need to be in bed."

"I've _told _you, it's only a bit of chest cough, and I'll pop in to the doctor's if it's not all sorted by Monday but I'm sure I'll be right as rain soon enough…" It doesn't help your case that saying that many words that quickly all at once leaves you winded, and you can feel another cough building in your chest. His eyebrows disappear beneath his hairline but he doesn't say anything.

A minute passes in silence. Dirk is facing forward, his foot tapping an agitated rhythm into the car floor. A sidelong glance tells you that he's definitely paler than before, and you nudge the gas. His tapping foot aside, he's holding himself very still, his back very straight in the seat.

"Alright there, chap?" You frown when he doesn't answer, doesn't make any indication that he heard you. "We're nearly there now."

"Well I'd better be on the brink of death here because I did have shit to do tonight," he mutters through clenched teeth. "Got a deadline coming up and I don't particularly want to be sitting around for hours telling you how to fill out my release forms." He huffs. "Stupid fucking mirror…what was it stuck in there with, Elmer's glue?"

"Might as well have been," you say, apologetic, because he _was _getting painkillers for _you _at the time. "Though, to be fair, it is my bathroom. You're never in there."

"It's my favorite fucking room." His voice is too pissy to be deadpan.

"Duly noted," you say carefully as you pull into the hospital lot. You're not entirely convinced anymore that it's your coughing that's got him so on edge.

When the car stops, he jumps. You touch his shoulder gently, and he jumps again.

"…Dirk?"

"What." His voice is taut, like a rubber band about to snap.

You reach into the center console to hand him one of his collapsible canes, but his uninjured arm darts out and he snatches it up.

"What's wrong?" you tease lightly as you open the car door for him. "Don't tell me a few lousy needles are going to send the great Dirk Strider running for the hills."

He calls you a dick under his breath and shuts the door with unnecessary force behind him. And normally you'd laugh at him, but you don't, not only because it would have you on your knees on the asphalt coughing and wheezing, but because dread has sunk into the pit of your stomach like a cold lead weight.

Wordlessly he grips the arm of your jacket, folding his injured arm tightly against his chest. He's still standing stiff as a board. You wait for him to open his cane—or to hand it to you to open it, rather, because he can't very well do it with one hand—but he never does.

When you start working towards the hospital entrance, Dirk clutching your sleeve and following along behind you with his head ducked, almost meek, your dread just about quadruples.

You'd had to park further away from the entrance than you would have liked, and the chill of the night air is doing a number on your thoroughly abused lungs. You have to hold your breath a few times along the way to avoid yet another coughing fit—just what you need when you're about to enter a building full of sick and injured people, you think, and you vaguely wonder if they'll kick you to the curb if they catch you at it. Or stick a surgical mask on your face or something.

By the time you're seated in the ER lobby, you feel lightheaded. There's a stack of white forms on a clipboard sitting on your knees that you're trying not to think too hard about. Your face is tingling, and your limbs are a bit numb, and really you just want to sleep. You'd been completely out of breath while trying to explain to the receptionist just what had happened, but you think she thinks you're probably just frantic. Dirk's standing stiffly beside you, offering no input aside from the occasional nod, but he does look rather a mess himself right now, bleeding like the dickens all over his shirt and the rumpled towels on his arm.

You still haven't filled out a single line of paperwork when a nurse appears to usher the both of you back into the emergency room. You wearily tuck the clipboard under your arm—you'll have to fill them out while they're stitching him up, and maybe you _can _let him talk you through them. When you'd looked at them earlier you'd found you were so exhausted that all the words were running into each other and every which-way all over the page, so you'd given it up and found yourself staring blankly at the nubby carpet while Dirk's foot _tap-tap-tapped_ beside you…

Dirk trails along behind you again in the ER hallway, silently, two fingers hooked in your jacket pocket. But then his hand slides into yours, his fingers freezing and his palm sweaty, and you're so startled that you nearly stop walking. When he falls in step beside you and you turn to look at him, he very pointedly turns his face away in the direction of the wall. You squeeze his fingers as you're both ushered in the direction of an examination area, but you're too stunned to do much else.

Flirtation is no big deal to Dirk, particularly flirtation with _you, _and showering you with public displays of gratuitous affection for his own amusement has proven to be one of his favorite pastimes. A few days ago he'd grabbed your ass in the supermarket checkout line, and last week he'd slung an arm around your shoulders while you'd sat side by side with him on a park bench, and he'd called you "babe" for the better part of the day. But he was messing with you—he loved it when you got flustered and irritated and it only egged him on. Roxy had implied in passing that he was gay ages ago, but when you'd asked him about it—"Wait, so you're gay?"—the only answer you'd received, with a smirk and a voice dripping with sarcasm, was "Wait, so you're _straight_?" And you'd let it go, knowing he'd never give you any sort of direct answer, and you'd batted away his frequent advances with as much good grace and benefit of the doubt as you could muster. And you ignored the quickening of your own pulse and the dry mouth and the flush of heat in your face that occurred sometimes, because he was _joking, _wasn't he, and you were his caretaker and there were boundaries of propriety that you at least had to maintain even if he wouldn't. And you could sort out your own jumbled up feelings towards him on your own time. You had a job to do, after all.

But _this? _This is entirely different. There's honest-to-god desperation in the grip of Dirk's fingers now, something awful about his stance and averted gaze even if you both knew that all you'd be able to see is the reflection of your own worried eyes in his stupid oversized shades. You skim your thumb over his knuckles. "Dirk?" Your voice is quiet.

He shakes his head once, minutely, and he withdraws his hand.

Your head is buzzing and your chest is aching like a bitch by the time they start stitching Dirk up. And Dirk seems weirdly fine again, easily chatting with the doctor who is extracting tiny fragments of mirror that you hadn't seen earlier from his long jagged cut with a pair of tweezers. And you're glad for that, because you are officially out of the energy required to maintain a proper conversation. And really you just want to lie down. You've abandoned the paperwork completely, the clipboard having slid and clattered to the floor at your feet some time ago.

But Dirk has a white-knuckled grip on his chair with his other hand, you notice as the doctor snips off another completed stitch, and that doesn't quite sit well with you.

You don't realize that you've been dozing off until the doctor is shaking your shoulder. Startled, you blink up at her, to be met by eyes narrowed in concern over thick-rimmed glasses.

You open your mouth to say something—apologize, maybe—but all that comes out is an odd little wheeze.

Over the doctor's shoulder you can see Dirk's face turned in your direction, and he's frowning. "Still with us, English?" he asks, and when the doctor moves you can see that a clean gauze pad has been taped to his arm, the stitches completed. His frown deepens when you don't answer. "If you're nodding to me, dude, I can't tell."

But you're not nodding, you're not doing anything but sitting there and staring at them both stupidly, your jaw slack and your hands slack in your lap. The air around you feels very thick, and very stuffy, and you can't quite remember _how _to draw oxygen from the air into your lungs. Even if you could, where would the oxygen go, you hazily wonder as your eyes roll upward toward the tiled ceiling. Your lungs and throat are full, full of some burning bubbling choking fluid. And _why _is it so blasted _hot _in here all of a sudden? Dirk and the doctor are both talking again, and it sounds frantic to you, maybe, but it's like you're hearing it through deep water. The doctor's fingers are cool on your forehead and then the side of your neck, and you think you hear Dirk shouting your name.

You can't answer.

You can't breathe.

You _can't breathe._

"Jake!"

You remember nothing after that.

...

You landed this job because of your grandma. She didn't live at the nursing home herself—she'd dryly informed you that you'd have to take her out back and shoot her first if you ever intended to dump her in a place like that. But she did have friends there, bingo buddies, who with some coaxing turned into bowling buddies, and hiking buddies, and skeet shooting buddies, and mountain climbing buddies, much to the amusement of the daytime nurses and volunteers. You'd accompany her sometimes to the home after your classes at the community college, but after nearly a year of this you'd had no idea that the home doubled as an assisted living facility for disabled residents of any age. Not until your grandmother had formally introduced you, with a conspiratorial little smile, with the home's only non-senior disabled resident.

You had no idea that Hollywood's biggest up-and-coming producer had a younger brother at all, and Dirk had given you an odd smile and told you that most people didn't, that that was by design, and that it was going to make your prospective job as caretaker a whole lot easier. If it wasn't for Dave Strider's name on your paychecks every two weeks, you might not have believed it. Dirk never mentioned him.

The two nurses assigned to Dirk at the home, Jane and Roxy, were both lovely gals in their own right,

and were ecstatic at the prospect of Dirk finally getting to move back into his own apartment, to gain

back some of his autonomy after his illness. Meningitis, they'd told you, without elaboration.

"It's bad for him here," Jane had said sadly, cleaning her glasses on her sleeve and shaking her head. "He'll sit in his room for hours on end…doesn't want to come out of his room for meals, barely talks to anyone…"

"I found him once in there," Roxy had confided sometime later, and she still looked shaken by the memory. "He'd taken apart the computer in his room. And, well, he couldn't figure out how to put it back together, I guess. Didn't really matter because the thing was a dinosaur anyways, but…" She'd paused and averted her eyes. "He was just…sitting there, on the floor, with all these busted up computer parts scattered all over the place and he was in the middle of it all, and he looked…God, I don't even know. I got him out of there but it was awhile before he'd talk to us again."

It only took a day of living with him for you to realize that Dirk Strider was a bona fide genius. Although it was his brother paying you, you'd been informed beforehand that Dirk did in fact have a job. It took some prodding before he'd tell you anything besides "I told you, I sell my body on the streets, dude. You'd be shocked what some sickos will pay for the whole blind-and-helpless shtick."

Roxy had finally taken pity on you and explained that Dirk worked from home as an assistive technology developer and consultant for the American Foundation for the Blind. Suddenly the hours and hours he spent dictating mathematical formulas and long strings of binary code into computer mics and headsets made a lot more sense, his scrawling yet more equations and codes onto the giant dry-erase board in the living room and making you read and repeat it back to him over and over while he paces around the room, weaving effortlessly around the furniture.

He has two Master's degrees hanging framed in his bedroom. One in Engineering, and the second in Robotics, and you feel woefully inadequate in comparison. You're the same age as him, and yet you're an underwhelmingly average student, and still struggling to pay your way semester to semester through community college and until recently, living blessedly rent-free with your grandmother. You'd been desperate to make ends meet when you'd taken this job, taking the whole semester off in a luckless attempt to find work.

Dirk, meanwhile, doesn't even need the use of his eyes to be utterly brilliant, inventing and developing the technology for some of the most ingenious accessibility technology to date. Flawless text-to-speech programs, braille printers. Even prototypes for programs that would directly, digitally convert web pages and e-books into a readable braille surface without the need for a printer whatsoever.

That doesn't mean that Dirk doesn't use you as his preferred substitution for all this technology. He'll make you read to him for hours, web page after web page of technical jargon and then laugh at you when you can't pronounce half the words in them. He'll make you bring back armfuls of books from the public library, and he'll mock your reading voice but swear up and down that at least you're better than any of the shitty audiobooks available out there. He'll lay his head on your shoulder listening to you.

For the longest time you thought he was doing all this just to annoy you, because he's so fiercely self-reliant in so many ways. He dresses alone. Grooms alone. Fetches things around the apartment alone. And always, _always _walks alone. You hover at a reasonable distance, particularly at crosswalks, but he's proud and you can respect that.

Except when he's hitting on you. But even then, it's Dirk who has the upper hand, and it's you who's left the blushing, stammering fool.

He fell asleep on the couch once, a few weeks back. When you walked in from the kitchen after doing the dinner dishes, you'd nearly had an aneurysm at the sight of him—you could have sword for a moment he was lying there dead he was so still. Dirk is a chronic insomniac and a horribly restless sleeper. You could wake up at 3AM to find him in the living room in an agitated near-trance, tracing lines of binary into the couch cushion and muttering to himself until you can coax him back to bed. But now he was so, so still—breathing so deeply through slightly parted lips, and you were mesmerized. You'd hesitated, as though the slightest movement from you might break the spell, but then you'd slid the glasses down off the end of his nose. He didn't stir, but you'd held your breath. His eyelashes were pale, his face thin with a dusting of freckles over a long nose. Your heart had risen to your throat. This sight was sacred, somehow. Not meant for you. Not without his permission.

You'd watched him for hours. You never told him. You never will.

...

_Whoosh. Hiss. Whoosh._

You hear it, but more than that, you _feel _it—you're moving with that sound, muscles pushed and pulled in and out—_Whoosh. Hiss. Whoosh. Hiss._

It's warm now, and bright.

Somewhere, you can hear a slow beeping sound.

And someone's holding your hand.

Your fingers twitch. The beeping speeds up.

The hand suddenly tightens around yours.

_Whoosh. Hiss. Whoosh._

"Jake?"

You open your eyes, try to breathe.

You can't.

_To be continued- _


	2. Chapter 2

You're choking.

Something is jammed in your mouth, down your throat. The beeping becomes frenzied, deafening, and you're scrabbling and tearing at your throat, your mouth. Your fingers close around something long and thin, snaking out from between your lips. Before you can yank it out, hands close around your fingers, prying them loose, then seizing your wrists and pinning them down on either side of your head.

"Jake. _Jake. _Stop it."

You struggle beneath that iron grip—you're _dying, _you can't breathe and you're _dying, _and they won't _let go. _

But you're weak, and thrashing around leaves you dizzy, and you stop, still gagging.

"Jake. _Hey_. Listen to me, alright." The hands wring your wrists.

You don't know what else to do then, so you try to nod, but when you do, the thing stuck in your throat shifts and catches a little and you gag again.

"Stop trying to breathe, okay. Relax. Stop trying."

Your eyes are watering too damned much to see anything at all, to look for the source of the voice. The smell of some antiseptic, or alcohol, burns in your nose. Your head feels light.

"Good. That's really good, Jake." The voice sounds relieved. "Okay, listen, so the thing in your throat? It's breathing for you. You need to let it breathe for you right now, alright? Can you do that for me? Stop fighting it."

You don't dare nod again, so you squeeze the fingers now squeezing yours, shut your eyes, and stop breathing.

_Whoosh. Hiss. Whoosh._

"Good." A sigh. The fingers lace themselves with yours, and you know that voice. You open your eyes again.

And it's Dirk, leaning over you, pinning you down. Of course it's Dirk, you feel like you should have known that, really, but nothing makes a lick of sense to your addled brain at the moment.

He's missing his shades. That's the first thing you notice.

His eyes—wide, pale amber—are inches above yours, staring right past you, like he can see through the wall. They're ringed with bruise-like shadows, trademark of the insomniac but darker now than they've ever been. You squeeze his hands again and he gives you a strained smile.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, moron." Cautiously he lets go of your hands, tugging them back down by your sides. His own hands reposition themselves—one finding your chest, fingers splaying out over your ribcage, the other repositioning itself over top of the slack grip of your right hand.

"Pneumonia," he says at last. "And clearly one severe-assed case of it, too. You should have said something," he adds, quieter, through his teeth.

_Well the buggerfucking hell if I knew that, _you think, but you squeeze his hand anyway. You're not sure if he takes it as a yes-I-should-have or an I'm-sorry, but his expression softens nonetheless.

"Goddamn, though, with every shitty pun intended, you should see yourself right now." His fingers skim your chest, carefully, tracing bumps and lines snaking beneath what must be a hospital gown. "You're hooked up to a metric shit ton of hardware here." His fingertips sweep the palm of your hand, brush up the inside of your forearm and into the inner crook of your elbow. There's an IV there, hooked up and taped in place, you can see now. He draws his index finger across the edge of the tape—it tickles, and goose bumps erupt on your arm.

"At least you had the courtesy not to pass the fuck out until I was all stitched up," he says then, holding up his old forearm, where there's still a long, neat white gauze rectangle taped in place, extending nearly from elbow to wrist. He's wearing blue, you notice. A pair of loose, wrinkled hospital scrubs. Now that he's let go of your hand you reach for the hem of his shirt, your brow furrowing.

His hand lights over yours and he seems to understand. "Oh. Hah. Sexy, right?" He grabs your fingers and moves them a little lower, to his hip. "Feel that elastic waistband…"

His smile fades and he lets your hand drop. "I woke up in these yesterday."

_Yesterday?_

You seize his hand again, squeeze it hard, twice, hoping he gets the message and tells you just what the fuck had happened.

He says nothing, his mouth a taut line, and lifts his chin a bit. Sits up straighter. You can't see those pale orange eyes anymore from where you're lying. "They tell me you're doing a lot better," he says, and something in his voice sounds odd, shut off. "Your fever's down." He takes his hand out of yours and places both of his on either side of your chest. "Your lungs are a lot clearer than they were. See?"

_Hiss. Whoosh. Hiss._

His hands rove up and down your chest, slowly, meticulously, mindful of the wires taped there. "Feels a hell of a lot better than it did."

And it does, now that you can breathe unobstructed, and you can only feel a vague fraction of that painful, bubbling gunk that had been stuck tight down in your lungs. You wonder if they've drugged you. Probably. But, you wonder, exasperated, it feels a hell of a lot better now than it did _when_, exactly?

But he doesn't elaborate. A moment later gentle fingers are sliding up to the side of your neck. Tracing your jaw, lingering a moment to circle your earlobe before carding softly through your hair.

And your eyelids are growing heavy. _Damn it all, Strider…_

_..._

You wake again to Dirk talking in a low voice to someone you can't see. All you _can _see is the back of Dirk's head from where you're lying, and his hair looks soft and bright in the glow of the fluorescents overhead. His hand is still in your hair.

Dirk's voice is tense, with an undercurrent of irritation, and eventually you hear retreating footsteps and the creak of a door hinge. He huffs a long sigh, and you reach up and take his hand again.

"Hey," he says, turning back towards you. He's holding himself like a spring coiled too tightly and his brows are drawn together over pallid eyes. You wonder where his shades are; he never takes them of out of the house as a general rule. His eyes are a sight for you and you only and then again only rarely.

He frowns. "So the fuckers called Roxy on me…" he mutters. "Trying to make her make me leave your ass to rot in here."

At the mention of Roxy you crane your neck, trying to see the door—wait, then, was she just here?—and wind up jostling the breathing tube and gagging yourself yet again for your efforts.

"Alright, relax, relax, okay?" He pushes you back against the pillow. "She'll come see you later, Romeo, I'm sure. She's not leaving here without me," he adds, bitterly. "And apparently," he mutters, "she says that according to them it's either home or the psych ward at this point…"

You blink. _Psych ward? What the hell…_

"But you're grandmother will be here," he continues. His shoulders slump a bit. "She was the first person they called for you, obviously, that first night, and she was…" He trails off, shrugs. "She sat with me for awhile while they were busy trying to make you breathe again."

You haven't let go of his hand, and he's brought it down to lie on your chest again. He says nothing for a long time. Then eventually he fidgets a little and huffs a breath. "Your grandma'll be back soon, though, she and Jane were headed to our place to pick up some things…so."

_So…what? _Your fingers pump his hand. Something feels very wrong here.

His thumb slides up to rub a small circle on the inside of your wrist, and he clears his throat. "So I figure I'd better tell you what actually happened, give you the quick and dirty here before everyone shows up again to give you the shitty Lifetime movie version of events." He takes a very long pause, looks preoccupied and transfixed by some thought, or memory. "So apparently I didn't do so well without you."

You watch his face. He seems to have aged ten years in ten seconds. The shadows under his eyes are more pronounced than ever.

"You passed out, and when they took you away they stuck me in a waiting room with some poor graveyard shift intern to babysit me." He smirks faintly but it's humorless. "I don't actually remember much, but apparently I decked the guy. Broke his nose. And that's when they sedated me."

_Whoosh. Hiss. Whoosh._

Your chest feels tight. Dirk's eyes are wide, glassy. He looks lost somehow, very lost and overwhelmed. Your stomach is contorting itself into impossible knots, and suddenly you wish he'd stop telling you this, and just lie down next to you now and sleep. Anything to get that look off his face. But he keeps talking. His voice sounds even, nearly nonchalant, but you know that he's fighting to keep it that way. "Your grandma came not long after that, I guess. All I could really do was lie there and drool at her like a stoned asshole, but yeah. Uh. It was nice of her, especially when she had no idea how you were doing yet." He swallows hard. "So. That was two days ago."

_Two days…_ You feel vaguely as though you've been socked in the gut. So you've been out cold while a machine pumps oxygen into you for two full days?

And you'd left him alone that long. You feel nauseated.

You stare at Dirk, and he must've sensed that your eyes were practically bugging out of your head at him due to this particular revelation, because he pats your chest lightly. "Don't worry, dude. Another few days at most and we're blowing this joint, I promise. You're doing a lot better now." He pauses, his hand clenching into a fist over your heart. "And the hell if they think I'm going to leave you here." His voice is soft, but it has a deadly edge to it. You shiver. Just what on the good green earth had he _been_ through while you'd been out? Sedatives, threats of the psychiatric ward…

"I hate hospitals." He laughs weakly, but it's an awful sound that makes your chest ache. "I really, truly fucking hate hospitals." His hand is trembling under yours, and his face seems to have gone as white as the bedsheets. He laughs again, a short harsh sound, and turns his face towards the ceiling. "I know I'm gonna live to regret this but for once in your life you can't talk back so what the hell." He taps your chest somewhere between your heart and your collarbone. "I don't think I ever told you about how I went blind, did I."

_Hiss. Whoosh. Hiss. _Your fingers are cold.

"It was…God, I guess it was a year and a half ago, now." He shakes his head. "I was getting ready to present a double Master's thesis. Was running mostly on caffeine and adrenaline back then, was catching maybe two, three hours of sleep a week if I was lucky. Didn't really think anything of it when I started feeling run down. Just pushed through it. Pretty stupid of me in retrospect." He lifts your hand up suddenly, holding it in the air in both of his. His calloused fingertips brush over every inch and contour of your hand as he talks, prodding, exploring.

"You know it's rare for meningitis to cause swelling of the optic nerve. More often than not you'll go deaf, and that would have _really_ sucked…got lucky there." He lets out a shaky breath, his fingers examining your nail beds. "You should've seen the fucking ridiculous $5200 pair of headphones my bro showed up with for me that first week after." He snorts. "God, what an asshole…" His voice cracks, and he presses your hand against his mouth, shaking his head again. Something behind his eyes fractures. And something inside you fractures watching him.

"You know that douchebag was going to retire, then and there. Only two films in and he was gonna flush his whole career down the toilet." He's talking rapidly now, blinking just as rapidly. The sound of his voice vibrates against your hand still held up to his lips. "And of course he proposes this bullshit plan to me while I'm the one lying there like you are with a damned respirator shoved down my throat, and I couldn't _see _him and he just…" He gulps. "That motherfucker just sat there and _cried, _and I couldn't…" There are tears in his eyes now. You squeeze his hand hard. He clears his throat again, but his voice is low and rough. "Well, uh, as soon as I was able to, I told him to stop being a fucking idiot and that if he didn't get his ass back on the first plane to Los Angeles as soon as I was better that I'd never talk to him again." He gives a small watery chuckle. "He didn't like that. But he listened, on one condition. I told him to give me a year, one year to adjust to all this shit without him breathing down my neck, and if that after that I still needed somebody to hold my hand to cross the street and wipe up spittle from my invalid chin he was more than welcome to come claim the job." He wrings your hand a bit. "Good thing I found you to do all that though, huh?" He pauses. "Now that I'm on my own and working again, though, he's decided to extend that year into two years, and he knows that if he ever shows up on my doorstep before then having decided to quit it all for my sake that I'll eviscerate him and his body will never be found. And I swear that if I ever catch that dickwipe crying over me again I'll…"

His voice falters, and you reach up, slowly, to touch his cheek, swipe tears away with your thumb. His shoulders are shaking now, fine tremors running through his body, and he lets his eyes fall shut. "God, I hate hospitals…" It's barely more than a whisper. His face crumples.

You squeeze his hand so hard it hurts.

...

Roxy and Jane take Dirk home with them that night. As it turned out, the doctors were serious about the psych ward; it had been a full-blown and violent panic attack that Dirk had experienced that first night in the waiting room and the unfortunate nurse who had tried to calm him down had wound up with a deviated septum for his troubles.

"A change of atmosphere is in order," the doctor who had first treated Dirk's cut had said. "I'm no psychiatrist but a hospital clearly isn't a healthy environment for a long-term meningitis patient to return to, let alone one left with a disability. And I really couldn't say if he'd fare any better in the psychiatric ward. He should go home. Come back for a bit during proper visiting hours if he wants." Her eyes were kind and sad, exactly the sort of thing Dirk would hate to have directed at him. But there had been nothing for it but to agree. Jane had walked away down the hall with the doctor then while she drew up some referrals to a few different counseling and psychiatry centers, making sure to keep the woman out of Dirk's earshot.

Dirk looked livid when he'd found out that he had no option except to leave, especially when he was told that you had to stay another three days at least, and had one day left to go before they'd take the ventilator out. Roxy and Jane had tried to tell him that you'd be out of it most of the time anyway—and they were probably right, you couldn't stay awake very long because of the drugs they were pumping through you to dull the deep, constant ache in your chest, throat, and head, and a stubbornly lingering fever that left you feeling drained at all hours. But by the tone of Dirk's voice you'd have sworn he thought the doctors were going to do something dreadful to you if he left your side for a moment.

"This is such bullshit," he'd muttered in your ear before he left, then kissed your forehead. "I'll be back tomorrow, alright? I promise."

His eyes were still tinged with red from earlier, but he'd jammed his shades on his face before he'd turn back towards Jane and Roxy. Roxy had slung an arm around his west and he'd let her walk him out of the room that way. Jane had given you a sweet smile and waved before following them.

Your grandma's the one sitting by you holding your hand now. When she'd arrived, you'd sat through a perfectly warranted lecture on the need to take proper care of yourself, and to "suck it up and go to the damned doctor when you're sick once in awhile, why don't you." You'd tried your best to look contrite, and considering that you had a breathing tube sticking out of your mouth, you must've looked a pitiful enough sight to dispel her worried anger. She'd given you a warm look, ruffled your hair and slid your spare pair of glasses from home onto your nose, and had then launched into some colorful anecdote about last week's bungee jumping excursion with her bingo buddies to take your mind off things.

Her cell phone rings once, hours later while you're both dozing off. She says it's for you and hands it over, and you hold it up to your ear with an arm that feels rather like lead.

"Hey, English."

You can't talk back, but you fall asleep listening to the sound of Dirk's voice.

*End*


End file.
